Sharon Lee never felt like she fit in growing up in Cleveland in the ’70s and ’80s. As the only Korean American at her high school, she was asked if she knew karate or if she was related to Bruce Lee. “I was very aware, when I was very young, of not being white, and I really struggled with that, growing up, feeling embarrassed about my parents, not feeling like I fit in, always wishing I was taller and had bigger eyes,” she said.

Students in the class of 2011 researched and interviewed 16 people who overcame obstacles because of race, gender or disability, talking to them about their experiences, said Uni student Maria Gao, who along with Anne Machesky, produced the hour-long documentary, Competing Against Discrimination: Achieving Equality in Athletics at the University of Illinois. It aired at 6 pm Saturday, Sept. 27, 2008, on WILL-AM 580.

Urbana University High School students took a first-hand look at the ideas and thought processes of 15 leading University of Illinois researchers to create a radio documentary, Widgets and Digits: Technological History, Research and Invention at the University of Illinois.

Growing up in Champaign as one of a handful of Jewish children in town, Ruth Kuhn Youngerman enjoyed friendships with people from a variety of faiths. The Jewish community was small and close-knit, led by Jewish storeowners such as the Sterns, Lowensterns and Kuhns who helped develop commerce in downtown Champaign and Urbana.

In a radio documentary approximately 60 Urbana University High School subfreshmen looked at how African Americans in central Illinois combated racism in their schools and communities after the Brown v. Board of Education court decision.

A dictionary would define jazz as "American music often characterized by syncopation and polyphonic ensemble playing." But for musicians who have spent their lives performing, jazz can't be so simply defined. University Laboratory High School students talk with local jazz musicians about their craft.

The objects looked ordinary to the casual observer: a model boat, a toy train set, a couple of hand-made dresses. An old pipe, some ticket stubs and an angel doll. But for the students who held them, the objects opened a flood of memories.